Name: Joe Rogan Experience #2353 - Shaka Senghor
Uploaded: 2025-07-22T17:00:05.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #2353 - Shaka Senghor' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-07-22. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #2353 - Shaka Senghor' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-07-22. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #2353 - Shaka Senghor

the Joe Rogan experience
What's up pleasure to meet you are such a pleasure to be here my yeah, it's um,
I
Heard your story. Why don't you tell everybody your story because the story is
it's pretty wild
Yeah, so I grew up in Detroit
Working-class neighborhood dad was in the Air Force and work for the state mom
was a homemaker
So on the outside looking in it really look like a household where the kids
should make it
but unfortunately, it's very abusive household and
I ran away when I was about 13 years old and at the time prior to that
You know honor roll scholarship student dreams of being a doctor artist
I wanted to be a doctor because I felt like that was an occupation where I felt
like you can help people and
Unfortunately, you know when I ran away
I thought that I would basically just kind of get
Welcomed into the home with someone who would see this kid and be like oh, you
know
This kid just deserves loves or whatever
but I found myself on the east side of Detroit in an apartment with a gun to my
head and
It was my introduction to the street culture. I was being robbed
And I was being robbed by this guy who later we would learn his name was tiny
Even though he was like big fat probably about six feet tall and him and his
partner Lily robbed me a gunpoint took my drugs took the money and
I think that was like one of those moments where
The innocence of being a kid just was shattered, you know, it's like, you know
now I'm in this world where my life is in danger
But I stayed in that culture. My childhood friend was murdered
I was beaten nearly to death and
Despite that I just continued to sell drugs. You know, it's it's one of the
things that I when I think back to
You know, even that part of my life, you know, there's the glorification of
like the hustler, right? It's like, you know, we are here making money
we're doing things but
The reality is it's a kid navigating a very dangerous adult world at the time
that crack is just penetrating the community and
one of the one of the things that always go back to this image of the first
time I made a lot of money
And I just had this wad of cash like it's like all singles five dollar bills
ten dollars bills
And I went to the store on the corner and I bought all the cereal that I can
think of like all the cereal that I could not
You know, my parents they even though, you know, my dad made decent money
Like we couldn't always get all the cereal because it was like all these kids
and then I bought like chocolate milk and strawberry milk
And then I went back to the crack house
And you were like what 13 they're like 13 years old and so, you know, I stayed
in that culture
And then when I was like 17 years old, I was standing March 8th
I'll never forget that day. I was standing on the corner and I got into like a
minor conflict
and then I got shot multiple times and
That was probably the most serious turning point in my life
after I got shot
They caught Ambulance and Ambulance never came this at this time. I'm on the
west side of Detroit
and I'm just sitting on the porch bleeding and
My friend he was like look I'm gonna have to take you to the hospital because
Ambulance is just not gonna come and
I remember getting in the car and he's just like, you know
Breathe like you got to take these deep breaths. You know, this is how you're
gonna navigate the pain and
The reason he was able to do that he had got shot the year prior, you know, so
it's just like he got shot his friend got killed
so the gun violence was just you know, it was so much a part of like the
culture and and that I grew up in
that I didn't think about what was happening inside of me as I got shot and so
I get to the hospital
They take two of the bullets out of my leg and they leave one bullet in and
basically
they patched me up and
You know, I remember my dad coming to the hospital and at this point I was the
third of my brothers to be shot
and
I'll never forget this look on my dad's face of like
it was almost a look of
Like defeat, you know of like how do I how do I save my boys, you know?
And so when I when I left the hospital like
Nobody like the doctor the nurse nobody just was like hey, you're gonna have
all these feelings
And so I get back and I'm in the neighborhood
And you know, I'm angry because I really want to get revenge on this guy who
shot me like that's the number one priority for me
It's like, you know, I got to get I got to retaliate and then I'm standing
outside
This is probably like day two. I had crutches. So I'm like Lydie in the
neighborhood crutches patched up bullet wounds
I'm standing on the corner and
I remember a car coming down the street and like my body almost seized up and I
was like
Why do why am I why am I feeling this kind of like anxiety like now? It's an
anxiety back then that is was no name for it
But I couldn't tell my friends that I really was afraid of standing outside and
being exposed
Yeah, so that was 17 years old and so
What happened after that was I begin to?
Tell myself this story that if I found myself in conflict again, I was shoot
first and
I began to literally carry a gun every day
It wasn't the first time I carried a gun but like I began to carry a gun like
every day
Like it didn't matter what I was doing using the bathroom gun is on the sink. I'm
Going to sleep at night gun is up under the pillow probably wasn't the smartest
place to sleep with a gun
But that was the nature of how I felt, you know what I was dealing with it
So I started to tell myself this narrative in about 16 months or so later maybe
14 months
I
Was DJ in a party and you know, I love music, you know, I come from Detroit
It's like it's one of the greatest music cities, you know in the world
and so I'm DJ in this party and
shots ring out
people are running and scrambling, you know getting away and
You know the people whose party I was DJ and they come to the back like
somebody got shot in the front
So we got to shut everything down
So we shut the party down
We're on like super heightened alert, you know, we're getting making sure
everybody we got here account for like our crew and
You know, it's me and my girlfriend and we're going back to my home
and
I remember us walking we had walked around to the party. We're walking back and
his truck pulls up and
It's you know, it's car full of guys and so, you know, I'm on edge. I got a
pistol on me
So I'm like, you know, what's what's happening and he's like, oh, no
We just you know, so I know that Derek was the guy who shot the guy in front of
the house
So now we got at least some idea of who what the shooting is boss we get back
around and
When they get on our block cars coming up the street and there's a guy inside
the car and he's like, yo, you know
he calls me over and I'm like, you know, what's happening? He's like, yo, I
want to make a deal. Blah-blah
he got two guys that I don't know and
I'm like, um, I'm like not I don't want to do the deal right now
Like it's a lot going on and you know, so I'm a little amped up, you know, it's
a little, you know, a lot going on
And so we get into this verbal
altercation where he's like adamant about me selling some drugs to him
I'm adamant about him like, you know getting off the block and so that escalates
into like a full-blown argument and
One of the guys in the car with him. He joins into the arguments. We're like
all back and forth back and forth and
there's a moment where
you know, I turned to
Some moment I turned to walk away and I like Lily took what
Probably like one or two steps and I thought I heard
One of them trying to get out of the car and I'll turn and fire four shots that
tragically in the man's life
You know, it's one it's one of those moments that
I always think about that moment like what if I just took like a second step,
you know, what if I would have just like I mean
It was a series of what ifs, you know, but when I
Tragically into this man's life
And it wasn't the first time I had been in a gun battle. It wasn't the first
time I've been in any of that that that lifestyle
I felt it. I felt like I did something that was like you can't undo
Like I just like I felt it in my spirit like at 19 years old. I'm like one
month into
Being 19 and I was just like I fucked up
Like I've done something that's not you can't you can't repair that you can't
You can't come back and say I'm sorry. You can't come back and be like, you
know, I made a mistake or
Whatever and so, you know, the car screeches off
You know, people are you know running inside the house. Everybody's just like,
you know, what what what is happening?
I made everybody leave and then I
Was like I got to go on a run to something like I don't you know, I don't want
to get arrested. I don't want to be accountable
But I was arrested probably a day or so later I was charged with open murder
and
I was eventually convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 17 to 40
years in prison at the age of 19
so
Take me through what it's like when you got convicted
You you know now you're going to jail
What is what is this feeling like?
So when I got arrested
Got charged the first thing I went to the county jail
Wayne County Jail and
Going into the county jail
You are introduced to just this other world, you know, I had heard about it
You know growing up on the streets you hear about like you don't want to go to
the county jail is the worst shit ever, right?
And so going into the county jail was like, you know, it's going into a war
zone, you know, it's fights every day
It's like, you know, people are testing you. Can they fucking take your
breakfast and lunch?
So going in I knew that that was just a reality of like, you know
Anticipating like at some point I'm gonna have to prove myself
And I'm at the stand up for myself and and so I get into the county jail and I
end up the guy
Who I'm in the cell with he's serving life, but he's back on appeal
And so he's you know, he's kind of telling me all the kind of what they expect
in jail
And you know this guy right here on the cell block. He likes to fight all the
time or whatever
You know, but I also grew up like in the city, right? So I'm you know, I tell
people this all the time
Like you can I don't I don't do scared straight when I talk to kids about like
not going to jail because to me
It's not about it's not about being afraid if you from the hoods
You probably had a fight or two, you know, I'm saying
But I get in there and you know
We get into our dust-ups and you know
eventually it's kind of like a hierarchy of like, you know, who's gonna stand
up for themselves and and typically guys kind of back down
But early on I'm like, I don't I don't want to be in jail. I want to be in
prison. So I
ended up trying to escape from the county jail and
What happened was there was a guy on the cell block with me. He was already
sentenced
He's about to go upstate and do a lot of time and one day he went to recreation
and came back with like a long pole
He had smoked smuggled from the rooftop gym and his idea was that he would blunding
the officer take the officers uniform and then
Let us out the sale and take us out and I'm like dude. This has got to be the
dumbest fucking idea
We're not making it out of the cell block, right?
But I was like, but what if we take this pole and we bust a window out and bend
the beam and
So we plot over the next couple of weeks. We like would take people's like
sheets
Like we would bully people out of their seats. Like you can only have one seat.
You don't take the other one
So we took all these sheets
And we probably ended up with probably about 60 or 70 sheets and we can get out
of ourselves
So we would basically you you you tie the sheet up into a knot
Slide the knot under the door and pull it up into the door jam
And if you shake it and keep rocking it while you're pulling it up, it'll pop
open
And so we would just pop out we'd be out on like Lily in the day room
You know this back and you could smoke cigarettes in the building
That